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No way out

IT’S hard to keep tabs on your bugs when you use them to munch up pollutants
in the soil—a technique known as bioremediation. Now researchers in the US
have conducted the first successful field trial of genetically modified bacteria
that glow as they work.

The bacteria, tested on an outdoor plot at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory
in Tennessee, did the job without escaping from the site. Nor did the
researchers find that the genes had spread from the modified bacteria to other
soil microbes. “It’s the first release of a genetically engineered bacterium for
bioremediation authorised by the …